These days I even take the 777/747/787 on short haul 2 hr or less flights. I can enjoy the takeoff and landing with little time in between.

When I feel like I want to long haul, then I do it in the Concorde. Suddenly, those long hauls dont take so long anymore 😄

3 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Curious as to what happen if you fly online with live ATC. Let's say you take a nap for a bit and ATC tries to contact you and you're not there. What will happen?

For VATSIM, they have a 30 minute grace period. If you still dont respond, they will disconnect you from the network as its against the rules 🙂

Edited June 5, 20206 yr by snapshot21

3 minutes ago, snapshot21 said:

These days I even take the 777/747/787 on short haul 2 hr or less flights.

This is exactly what I do too. Since the 747, 777, 787 and A330 are my favorite planes. I know it's not quite realistic to use these planes for short hauls, but it's a sim.

12 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I totally agree... cruise phase is the most boring.

Oddly enough, I find cruise phase to be the most interesting.  Climb and descent have a lot of mildly annoying "busywork" and the actual landing is usually a no-brainer, even though it's always hand-flown.

Hook

14 minutes ago, snapshot21 said:

These days I even take the 777/747/787 on short haul 2 hr or less flights. I can enjoy the takeoff and landing with little time in between.

Same here, a 3 hour flight for me is pushing it, I need to keep under 2 hours. I can fly more than 2 hours but needs to be multiple legs in order to keep me engaged. I’ll also fly long haul birds on these short flights.

For longer flights I switch to P3D v3 and load Concorde. London to JFK in 3h 20m. It has a 4000 statute mile range so no flight is longer than four hours. Yes, the scenery is compromised because of VAS but this more about flying a brilliant aircraft than looking at the view. 

Who wants to trundle along at 550mph when you could be doing 1350mph? 😁

And because I also do the job of the Flight Engineer of moving the fuel for correct CG there’s never a dull moment.

I use Ideal Flight 'go to approach' or 'advance to next waypoint'. With that the fuel burn is calculated and the time adjusted so it's correct when I get there.

33 minutes ago, captain420 said:

This is exactly what I do too. Since the 747, 777, 787 and A330 are my favorite planes. I know it's not quite realistic to use these planes for short hauls, but it's a sim.

747 used for short haul in japan. 

i do all flights in real time. Mostly midrange filghts within europe but, as in the real world my legs take me 10 to 12 hours going from Hamburg to Barcelona and back to hamburg and then from Hamburg to frankfurt and back and another shorttrip from hamburg to duesseldorf and back to fill up the flight record. That is a normal working day for an airline pilot. But i would even sit in the cockpit 8 or 10 hours if i do a trip to New York or Miami from Frankfurt. But it makes a huge difference if you sit in hardware cockpit and watch the scenery passing by. Of course i get out of the flightdeck to have a small talk with the cabin crew, take a coffee, have a nip. And i take also a short sleep in the cockpit. Pilots do this aswell in reallife and its not forbidden as long there one pilot monitoring the aircraft.  

42 minutes ago, SteveW said:

I use Ideal Flight 'go to approach' or 'advance to next waypoint'. With that the fuel burn is calculated and the time adjusted so it's correct when I get there.

Yes, but you probably got it at cost less 50%😄

1 minute ago, IanHarrison said:

Yes, but you probably got it at cost less 50%😄

I spent the last year improving it for the blind and partially sighted pilots. In effect it cost me more than it cost anyone.

My VA does not allow breaks or acceleration mode in flights, so as I fly the 747 all the time, I usually start my flight in the (real time) afternoon and get to cruising, or as near as possible, then go to bed and let the sim pause about 200nm from the destination. Courtesy Radar Contact.

Then when I get up next morning, take over and land. 12 - 15 hour flight accomplished.

To make a fair disclosure, I am trying to build up my hours and rank.

12 minutes ago, SteveW said:

I spent the last year improving it for the blind and partially sighted pilots. In effect it cost me more than it cost anyone.

Well done, Steve. Sure that is much appreciated.

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

Curious as to what happen if you fly online with live ATC. Let's say you take a nap for a bit and ATC tries to contact you and you're not there. What will happen?

In Vatsim, if you do not respond to a controller’s requests to contact them for 30 minutes, you will be disconnected from the network, and may then find your account has been suspended for 24 hours. A standard SOP in Vatsim is to disconnect from the network if you are going to be away from the computer for more than 30 minutes.

I don’t do a lot of long haul flying these days, but when I do, it’s usually in the PMDG 747, and if the flight is going to be 12-14 hours, I will usually set it up to run overnight, with auto step climbs and auto tank-to-engine enabled. I’ll fly the initial part of the flight “live”, then go to bed, and return to the flight deck in the morning for the descent, approach and landing.

Not perfectly realistic of course, but it does somewhat emulate how things are done on real world long hauls, that will carry two sets of pilots. Typically the first crew will takeoff, and fly for a few hours, then go to the rest area to sleep while the second crew handles the enroute cruise phase. Later, the original crew will return to the flight deck to do the approach and landing. 

I’ve done several “cross the pond” events on Vatsim, that can involve up to seven hours of flying, which does require being present the entire time, since the whole point of the event is to have guaranteed live ATC coverage the entire way from takeoff to landing.

Never.  I’ll sit at the controls for a short hop sometimes, but even then I use time acceleration.

Long haul flights I’ll get to cruise, set time acceleration on and go do something else until TOD.

I do like flying trans-Atlantic flights in real-time overnight since that’s how most are done IRL, but I’m in bed for cruise and when I wake up I resume from TOD.